It's a massive deal in the LGBT community. Too many people associate masculinity and femininity with sexuality, and gay men often wind up unfairly discriminated against--if you need any evidence, there's about four pages here for you to check out. Having an openly gay professional athlete in one of the big four sports is going to be huge.

Some ugly, ugly fan reactions are coming up, though. The LGBT lobby is going to have their work cut out for them.